Chapter 15
Beau smelled the acrid smoke curling from the gun barrels as he inhaled deeply.
Without a word, Dr. Paine took off at a run up the ramp. Beau rushed down the ramp and barred the swinging doors from inside the morgue. By the time he returned, Dr. Paine was already backing his car down the ramp. He jumped out and opened the trunk hatch and he and Beau lifted Vance’s heavy body into the back.
They jumped in and with squealing tires Dr. Paine sped out of the hospital and stopped a short distance down the street where the hospital’s van had collided with a street lamp. The driver’s side door hung askew on one hinge from where Lucy had ripped it off. Lucy climbed out the back carrying Nellie. Beau opened the back door and Lucy slid her into it. Nellie remained asleep in her sedated state. A constable approached them from the far side of the wreckage.
“Hold there,” the constable said. Lucy turned and looked at him with her hypnotic gaze. “Forget you ever saw us,” she said. She slid into the front seat.
“Take the wheel, Beau,” Dr. Paine said as he climbed into the back with Nellie. He leaned over Nellie and measured her weak, but steady pulse. As Beau drove, Dr. Paine pulled out a light from his medical bag and pried open one of Nellie’s eyelids and then the other to examine the pupils.
“Drive us to my home,” Lucy directed Beau.
Dr. Paine examined Nellie’s limbs to make certain no bones appeared broken. For the second time that evening he examined her for a werewolf’s bite. Satisfied he turned around and sat back in his seat just before Beau pulled into a carriage house and parked. Moments later, Dr. Paine followed Beau carrying Nellie in his arms down a garden path to the towering home.
Lucy held the back door open for Beau.
“Take her upstairs. Pick any room.”
Dr. Paine hesitated at the door.
“Do you need an invitation to enter?” Lucy asked. Dr. Paine thought he saw a slight smile on her face, but in the shadows he could not be certain. “She’ll need a place to recover. Her flat will need repaired and she’s in no condition to face more questions from the police tonight. Do the police or the hospital staff know your name, your true name?”
“No,” Dr. Paine said. “I used a fake identity there. I don’t think I’ll be able to practice there again, though.”
“Of course you are free to stay here as a guest to care for your patient,” Lucy said. “There is plenty of room. I’m sure your presence will be a comfort, particularly when she realizes where she is.”
Dr. Paine thought he noticed the corners of Lucy’s lips had curled up slightly again after she spoke the last sentence. Dr. Paine looked at her intently, gripping his medical bag tightly.
“How did you know to stop the van?”
“When I saw the lorry pulled out so recklessly, I thought it best to stop it. I recognized the werewolf’s scent immediately. We fought in the street, but he escaped me and ran back inside, apparently realizing I could not enter because the hospital is on holy ground.”
Dr. Paine stood silent in the doorway. He stared at her intensely as if trying to judge her and to weigh her actions of the night with the knowledge he had of her history as a vampire. “Thank you,” he said at last. “You saved Nellie’s life.”
“She saved mine earlier,” Lucy said.
“So now you’re even?” he said, knowing the reasons for Nellie’s fear of the vampire.
Now it was Lucy’s turn to scrutinize him. “You should see to your patient, Doctor,” she said finally. “Follow me.”
She led him through the residence and he found himself amazed by the artifacts and works of art from ancient civilizations.
“I shall be leaving you for now,” Lucy said. “I need to recover further from my own wounds.”
“You don’t sleep here?” Dr. Paine asked.
“Good night, Doctor,” she said and turned and walked down the hall.
Dr. Paine entered the room. Nellie remained sound asleep. Beau stood behind him leaning against the wall, his face tense and pale. “She’ll be fine, Beau,” he said.
“I was so worried we had lost her,” Beau said.
“Me too,” the Doctor said. They stood quietly looking down at her. Dr. Paine adjusted her blanket and the two of them left, closing the door behind them.
“There’s no telephone here,” Beau said in the hallway. “Lucy never had one installed. You stay with Nellie. I’ll find a phone and ring Headquarters and let the Chief know what happened.”
“We left a terrible mess for the Chief,” Dr. Paine. “It’d be best if you reported in person.”
“I’d hate to be the inspectors assigned this case. A patient who is the victim of an earlier crime is abducted and missing. A patient murdered in her bed. Two orderlies murdered and no suspect.”
“The shooting of the orderly will probably be blamed on the burglar at Nellie’s apartment since the same rounds were most likely recovered there by the detectives,” Dr. Paine said. “It’s unlikely to be traced back to you, but you’ll want to dispose of your gun and get a new one.”
Beau nodded, frowning.
“You had no choice, Beau,” the Doctor said.
“I know,” Beau said quietly. They looked at each other.
“About earlier - at the restaurant,” Dr. Paine said. “We could not risk you being infected with vampirism.”
“I know,” he said.
Dr. Paine’s voice cracked with emotion as he said, “If I ever do have to kill you, I want you to know, it’s nothing personal.”
It had been a difficult night. Beau thought of their long history together and he thought of the innocent man he killed and of his fears of Lucy and Nellie’s deaths. “I know that, Doctor,” trying his best to reassure his friend and fight back his own tears. They understood each other.
“Go report in,” the Doctor said.
The Chief was still in when Beau arrived. Despite being the dead of night, several offices were lit. It appeared the Chief had called in everyone available to the Organization in the London area.
“Coffee?” the Chief asked once they were in the quiet of his office. Beau nodded and took the cup from him gratefully.
“How is Miss Thompson?”
Beau told him and followed with a detailed account of the night’s events. The Chief took notes without speaking until Beau came to the part of putting the werewolf’s body into the trunk. The Chief pressed an intercom button and asked for the Night Officer to step in. A moment later the door opened.
“You sent for me, Lord Godalming?”
“There is a dead werewolf in the boot of Dr. Paine’s automobile. “Would you assign two of our people to dispose of it and clean up any traces?”
“Yes, sir,” he said and departed.
The Chief turned back to Beau. “I’d like Miss Thompson to stay where she is until tomorrow evening. We’ll pick her up then and explain what she is to tell the police. I’ll need your gun. You’ll be able to draw another from the armory.”
Beau looked intently at the Chief.
“You’re pinning the deaths on another man,” Beau said.
“A German spy,” the Chief said. “This will solve our problem and assist a friend in counter-espionage. Scotland Yard will have two different crimes solved quickly and neatly.”
The Chief noticed Beau’s expression. “You don’t approve?”
“Compounding one crime by covering up another,” he said.
“It is illegal,” the Chief said. “What we do should be illegal. If the authorities ever caught us we’d all spend the rest of our lives in prison. Would you want to live in a country where the official machinery of government sanctioned our lawless activities?”
Beau gave a weak smile. “Months ago, when you first invited us to join, we suspected you were connected to the government.”
“No more connected to the government than any other citizen,” the Chief said. “I built the Organization for my own reasons and operate it out of my own pockets. Fortunately I inherited a considerable amount of money and was lucky in my investments.”
“Why did you form it?”
“Some other time I’ll tell you that story,” he said. “You and your friends worked well with Lucy. I’d like the three of you to keep working with her. I’ll have a chat with her. I’m sure she’ll agree to travel with you to Egypt.”
The Night Officer returned to the office. By the time he finished speaking to the Chief and the Night Officer about their plan to relocate the Headquarters as a precaution in case Vance’s friends had discovered it, and drawing a new weapon from the armory, it was dawn when Beau returned to Lucy’s. He opened the door to Nellie’s room to look in on her. Dr. Paine was sitting in a chair reading a book under the glow of a lamp. He looked up. Beau pulled up another chair near Nellie’s bed, took one last look at his two friends and fell asleep.
The End.
